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Sunday, July 29, 2012

The Colour of Trouble by Gerry Bobsien

Title: The Colour of TroubleAuthor: Gerry Bobsien

Release Date: 1st July 2012

My Rating: 3/5

Blurb:Maddy can’t stop making things: art, fashion and, most of all, TROUBLE. A new art project could give her the notoriety she desires, but that’s not all she’s dealing with. Her bestie, Darcy, is acting weird and starts dating a girl he’s never mentioned before. Her mum is living and working hundreds of kilometres away, and a new mystery boy keeps popping up at the most inconvenient times ... Will the fallout from her latest project push away all the people she loves? Does Maddy really want to be this NOTORIOUS?

In A Nutshell:A quick and enjoyable read, perfect for girls aged twelve to fifteen who like fashion, art and creativity.

My Review:Maddy is all about extravagance, she loves all things to do with art and craft and often crosses the lines of what she sees as ‘public art’ but others see as ‘vandalism’. She isn’t content with just being good at art, she wants everyone to know about her. She wants fame and recognition, and it would seem, notoriety. Maddy is lots of fun and I love how she and Darcy are so creative and entrepreneurial and I hope they inspire readers.

Maddy’s mum has had to move away for work so she and her twin brother Jack are living with their grandparents. Even so, Maddy and her mum have a great relationship and while the family has been pulled apart by necessity, they are all quite close. I have to say, I loved Norm, their grandpa. He used to have a confectionery company and now, although retired, is always whipping stuff up for friends and family. Their grandma has some attitude too and Maddy is always admiring her style. It would seem that most of the characters have an obsession with something and all of them contribute to the story in some intriguing, quirky or extravagant way: Maddy’s art teacher The Razz, her mentor Harry who is obsessed with yellow, the studious and football-loving Jack, her gardening enthusiast mother, co-conspirators Trinny and Poppy, and the mysterious busker Max. Oh and of course there is Darcy.

Usually in a book where there is a girl/guy friendship and it is told from the girls’ perspective, it is usually the girl who has fallen for the boy. So I like how in The Colour of Trouble, it is the other way around, Darcy has fallen for Maddy, which causes friction in their friendship.

A very cool little inclusion is that Maddy ‘suffers’ from synaesthesia which means she sees colours when she hears a particular noise and she has started to be able to ‘taste’ colours when she sees a particularly vibrant colour. I found it really interesting as it was recently brought up in a random conversation at uni and I had never heard of it before. According to a bunch of websites, it occurs when particular senses mingle in the brain. For more info, I suggest you google it.

1 comment:

i loved it, i loved it. for all it being quite short, and pretty easy to read, i felt that it was layered and complex. beautifully written, characters perfectly nuanced and plot carefully constructed it was still allowed to have lots of fun.